If your family is Christian, will they give you a regular religious ? What about getting married? Do you allow the DEFAULT things to happen. Or do you actively resist?
I am a secular celebrant, legally “ordained” in my US state, and write and deliver memorial services regularly. I work with the family/friends of the deceased to create a service focused on the life, character and achievements of that person in the context of their private and public lives, and the communities to which they belonged. If I do a good job, only the most rigidly “religious” attendees even notice that there is no mention of any gods, afterlife or dogma.
Great feedback! One problem - I think some people assumed I’m a Christian stirring up something. I’m PAGAN and was agnostic before. Never been Christian. I donated my body to science
The premise of your line of questions is "If your family is Christian". All following questions within the paragraph can logically be tied to your Christian premise.
Your inability to recognize your profound (what appears to be moving the goal post fallacy) lack of clarity is rather sad.
Donated your body to science.
This is an admirable position.
@NoMagicCookie
Moving goal post? Profound lack of clarity? No need to get snappy! Supposed to be a rhetorical place here. I stopped being cynical after middle school.
@SocialDarwin Sad you can not accept constructive criticism.
My 1st sentence clearly illustrated you error yet you ignored the obvious and took offense of my honest critique of your post.
Your response demonstrates you claim to have stopped being cynical but it sounds like you replaced that with "oooh you hurt my feelings boo hoo". SARCASM ALERT "You're welcome."
My answers: Butcher and donate all that is possible, burn the remains. Is my final contribution with mankind and less environmental damage due to body.
On marriage, yes I would marry in a civilian ceremony because some family rights only trigger if you are properly married.
For most atheists, it's a secular memorial service at a Unitarian church. Problem solved.
Why a church?
@Canndue More personal, friendly, and less sterile than a funeral home. A lot of times the dead person never attended there for years, if ever. The connection to the church is sometimes solely thru the dead person's friends or family. You wouldn't understand it if you'd never been to a Unitarian memorial service or been to a Unitarian church. It's a secular version of a church that people go to so they can have more of a community than they would ever get from an Atheists And Freethinkers group.
@TomMcGiverin interesting, I read, albeit many years ago, that the Unitarians and universalists churches merged due to declining attendance, then opened doors to all because it continued to decline. But thought there was still some worship aspect to it. Is that not the case?
@Canndue They call it a worship service, but there's no God talk and the sermons and readings are more about philosophy and meditation type stuff. A New Agey person would be right at home.